Students, faculty and staff were dropping like flies. The culprit: the norovirus, a nasty and merciless little bugger that loves to infect cruise ships, prisons, hospitals and, apparently, college campuses.

With pleasant symptoms such as nausea and continuous vomiting, the virus does a very good job of making life a living hell. And when a victim finally does recover, it’s usually just in time to start taking care of a roommate, whom he inevitably infected.

To make matters far, far worse, this outbreak conveniently coincided with the start of midterms. As if taking multiple two-hour examinations didn’t induce nausea already, now we had the norovirus to contend with too.

The virus spread like wildfire; in a matter of days it had reached every dorm on campus. It turns out that a group of stressed-out, sleep-deprived students who live together, work together, eat together and share bathrooms with each other provide a prime environment for rapidly spreading disease. Who knew?

It really was a dark time for LMU.

Warning signs went up all around campus, classes were getting smaller by the day, and Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” kept playing over and over in my head as my friends got sick.

For me, getting sick just wasn’t an option. I knew that the moment I got sick and missed class, my teacher would inevitably decide to go over The Single Most Important Piece of Information That You Absolutely Must Understand In Order to Pass the Midterm.

Since passing midterms is something of a goal of mine, I took every precaution necessary. For the most part, this involved taking vitamins and refusing to share my drinks with sick people.

The history department, where I work, was hit particularly hard.

Angela, our fearless leader and head of the teaching assistants, got sick. During her absence, the department very nearly fell apart. Without her guidance, we were lost and confused.

How many times are you supposed to turn the scanner on and off before it starts working? Is “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Herein” a good inspirational quote for the display cabinet? Did Professor Raab want this book returned to the library or put through the shredder?

Without Angela, simple questions like these could not be answered, and we actually had to make decisions for ourselves. It was a scary time I’d rather not see repeated.

The most interesting part of this outbreak were the rumors that flew around campus about what started it. Lacking the proper medical expertise required to accurately diagnose the sickness, we resorted to the next best thing – wild guesses.

Personally, I was convinced that Pepperdine, our hated archrival, was using biological warfare against us.

However, the most popular rumor by far was food poisoning. This rumor was remarkable in its complexity. According to the version I heard, the vice president of the school had secretly told the Greek council that the Lair, our main eatery on campus, had just failed its health inspection, and the bout of sickness was caused by bad food from the Lair.

I almost bought into the story simply because of its intricacy; I figured it was impossible for a random rumor to have that much detail. I vastly underestimated the power of college gossip.

Eventually, the school told us all that the norovirus was responsible, and assured us that the food was safe to eat. In reality, the Lair had passed its health inspection with flying colors and now has giant A signs posted all over. Throngs of students are once again overrunning the place.

Overall, the whole experience was quite educational.

The norovirus outbreak gave students of several majors something to think about: Bio majors could study the virus itself, psychology majors could study the rapid spread of rumors, and history majors, like myself, could apply lessons learned hundreds of years ago from the Black Plague and suggest that all of a sick person’s possessions be burned.

And the best part is, I avoided getting sick – although I still managed to miss The Single Most Important Piece of Information That You Absolutely Must Understand In Order to Pass the Midterm when I slept through class one day.

Michael Petersen, a graduate of Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, writes about his first year at Loyola Marymount University. He can be reached at mpeter41@lion.lmu.edu.

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